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GPU Demand for Gaming and Datacenters Boost NVIDIA's Quarterly Profit

Nvidia reported a 54.6 percent rise in quarterly profit, driven by strong demand for its graphics chips used in gaming devices, data centers, autonomous vehicles and also by cryptocurrency miners.

Net income rose to $838 million in the third quarter ended Oct. 29, from $542 million a year earlier.

Third quarter revenue increased 32 percent year over year and 18
percent sequentially to a record $2.64 billion. Growth was
driven by GPUs for gaming, datacenter, and professional visualization, as well as Tegra processors.

"We had a great quarter across all of our growth drivers," said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia. "Industries across the world are accelerating their adoption of AI.

"Our Volta GPU has been embraced by every major internet and cloud service provider and computer maker. Our new TensorRT inference acceleration platform opens us to growth in hyperscale datacenters. GeForce and Nintendo Switch are tapped into the strongest growth dynamics of gaming. And our new DRIVE PX Pegasus for robotaxis has been adopted by companies around the world. We are well positioned for continued growth," he said.

GPU business revenue was $2.22 billion, up 31 percent from a year
earlier and up 17 percent sequentially, with strength across all
platforms, including gaming, datacenter, and professional visualization platforms.

Record GeForce GPU gaming revenue of $1.56 billion was led by continued strong adoption of Pascal-based GeForce GTX gaming platforms.

Datacenter (including Tesla, NVIDIA GRID and DGX) revenue was
a record $501 million, up 109 percent year on year and up 20 percent sequentially, reflecting shipments of NVIDIA's Volta
GPU architecture.
Datacenter growth was fueled by strong demand by hyperscale
and cloud customers for deep learning training and accelerated
GPU computing, as well as demand for HPC, DGX AI supercomputing,
and GRID virtualization platforms.

Professional visualization revenue grew 15 percent year over year
and 2 percent sequentially to a record $239 million, led by high-end mobile platforms.

Tegra Processor business revenue, which included gaming development
platforms and services, was $419 million, up 74 percent from a
year ago and up 26 percent sequentially.

Tegra Processor business revenue includes SOC modules for the
Nintendo Switch gaming console and development services.

Also included was record automotive revenue of $144 million, which
was up 13 percent from a year earlier and up 1 percent sequentially, incorporating infotainment modules, production DRIVE
PX platforms, and development agreements for self-driving cars.

For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018, NVIDIA expects its revenue
to be $2.65 billion, plus or minus two percent.